The monks who keep coming to blows in Jerusalem

It was an unholy spectacle. On Sunday, brawling priests and Israeli paramilitary police careered through the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem after a fight erupted between two rival groups.

Armenian monks and their worshippers had been participating in a ceremony marking the 4th-century discovery of the cross on which Christ was crucified when they found their path blocked by a Greek Orthodox monk posted in Jesus's tomb. Fists began flying, kicking monks lost their footing and 10ft ceremonial candlesticks and banners toppled to the ground. Police dragged priests from the melee in head locks and arrested two Armenian clerics, who were later released.

It's the second time this year the police have broken up sparring monks in the church, which is shared between the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Armenians, Coptic, Ethiopian and Syriac sects. A centuries-old agreement between these rival custodians regularly fails to keep the peace in what is possibly the Middle East's longest-running feud.

Ever since 1192, when the Islamic ruler Saladin entrusted two Muslim families to lock and unlock the gates each day, none of the Christian groups have been allowed to hold the keys to the church. But the fighting between the Armenians and Greeks over the traditional site of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection has grown increasingly bitter recently.

On Palm Sunday this year, dozens of Greek and Armenian clerics and worshippers exchanged blows. It came just a few months after fighting broke out between clerics in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, where Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests, who were cleaning the holy site for Christmas, attacked each other with brooms.

Yet fisticuffs are not the Church of the Holy Sepulchre's only problem: in October it was revealed that a row between the Ethiopians and the Coptics was preventing urgent repairs to the roof, which is in danger of collapsing.

· This article was amended on Tuesday November 18 2008 to correct a malapropism. "On Sunday, brawling priests and Israeli paramilitary police careened through the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem". We meant careered. Careen: (1) to sway or cause to sway dangerously over to one side; (2) to cause a vessel to keel over to one side, especially in order to clean or repair its bottom (Collins).